Marketing and advertising are becoming increasingly integrated, with a steady increase in depending on a myriad of data sources to personalize advertising and measure performance. Dominant channels – and thus budgets – are shifting, too.

Increasingly, advertisers will rely on major platforms under Google and Facebook umbrellas to deliver their messages. There has been also a change in how campaign success is measured.

Cut through the noise and find out the new priorities, strategies, and tactics that signify the dawn of a new era in advertising.

Advertising and Marketing Are Converging

• 62% of the surveyed advertising and marketing organizations share common budgets and use the same team to send emails and to build ad campaigns, and 61% collaborate on the evaluation and purchase of technology.
• In general, at least half of companies rely entirely on internal staff to optimize ad spend across any given digital channel.
• 59% of them rely entirely on internal staff to optimize ad spend on Facebook and Instagram. Europe ranked at the top in this issue with a rate of 62%, followed by Asia-Pacific (59%).

Data – Lots of Data – Is Advertising’s North Star

• In 2017, advertisers used an average of 5.4 data sources, and next year they’re planning to use an average of 6.2.
• 95% of advertisers are currently using demographics data to target digital ads, and 94% are currently using CRM data – such as email addresses, phone numbers, and other brand interactions – to do so.
• 90% use online data – such as first-party anonymous, second-party, or third-party – for the same purpose too. First-party anonymous data is the most-used type of online data (71%).
• Nearly 8 out of 10 advertisers have been using data management platforms (DMPs), while just 11% plan to adopt a data management platform in the future.

Facebook and Google Dominate as Video Rises in Importance

• 66% of digital advertising spend will go to Google Search, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
• These channels represent 63% of total spending in North America, 67% in the Asia-Pacific region, and 69% in Europe.
• 65% of surveyed companies have increased their video advertising. The highest increase was in North America.
• In terms of measuring the effectiveness of ads, 55% of advertisers use the data management platform (DMP), 50% use website analytics platforms and 47% use the marketing attribution platform.

A Graph Shows the Percentage of Advertisers Who Have or Plan to Adopt a Data Management Platform (DMP) – 2017

Methodology:

Data were driven from 900 full-time advertisers, media buyers, and marketers with titles of manager and above. Respondents were from companies located in North America (United States, Canada), Europe (France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom/Ireland), and the Asia-Pacific region (Japan, Australia/New Zealand). Each region is represented by a sample size of 300.